Find your path and go for it with Quinn Abbey

Friends, it’s almost March! How are those New Years resolutions holding up?

It’s around now when we stop going to the gym, juicing, writing in our gratitude journals, and saving that extra $50 every week for vacation. You hit a wall where things start to feel hard, uncomfortable, or boring. Before you pick up your keys to run to McDonalds, listen to today’s podcast episode with Quinn Abbey, a yoga instructor and Desire Map facilitator who approaches goal-setting in a holistic and achievable way.

It can be scary. It is scary. It’s different and it’s easier to be comfortable, for sure. But, the question that I had to ask myself is, at the end of the day, am I happy with that? Is it okay just for it to be easy or do I want this to be this to be my shot at life and actually be able to do what excites me and lights me up?—Quinn Abbey on why she decided to go after her dreams.

It’s funny how you can listen to a conversation after it’s over and wonder what your real motivation for saying something is. Thank god I don’t record all my conversations, because there were a couple of moments in this interview where I sound envious. The truth is that I’m not, but it’s rare that you meet someone like Quinn who blows you away because of their clarity and gusto, whether they know it or not. As I was preparing for this interview, I thought a lot about where I was in my mid-20s—I think I was almost a completely different person then and my life seemed so amazing, yet shallow and immature. It’s hard not to wonder where I’d be at this point if I’d started five or six years ago. It’s exciting to know there are people, now in their 20s, who are probably going to be kicking ass at life in a real big way in their 30s.

Enough reflection. Let’s talk about what you can do to change your life now.

If you’re thinking about making some big changes, one thing that can be confusing is trying to figure out how other people made their change. Often, you hear a little about someone’s rock bottom and a lot about their happy ending. The most effort goes into the part in the middle, though.

The hardest part about change is resistance, self-sabotage, and fear. Desire Mapping, which is Danielle Laporte’s goal-setting program, was a total eye-opener for me when I first came into contact with it. Like Quinn, I had no problem setting and achieving goals, but I didn’t always feel great about what I achieved. The problem was that I was so focused on the thing that I was trying to achieve that I didn’t consider what kind of an emotional impact it would have. The magic of Desire Mapping is all about feelings, and that’s what makes it so powerful.

Shortly after recording this episode with Quinn, she and I partnered up for a Vision Board Party event. It was the perfect way to combine goal-setting with creativity and visualization…and good wine.

At this event, I shared the previous year’s vision board. A lot came true! In 2016, the most powerful achievement for me was a sense of freedom. I recall pulling my car over after a particularly draining day at work, needing to stop and feel what freedom could feel like. I’d just had enough of commuting, trying to concentrate in a noisy, open space, and trying to force myself to like work that didn’t feel like the right fit for me.

At that point, I closed my eyes and imagined a picture in my head of what freedom would look and feel like. That moment was so short, but it was one of the most memorable moments of 2016. The things in life don’t make us happy; happiness, or whatever other desired feeling we have, comes first.

If you want to learn more about visualization and connecting with your goals, the best place to start is Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek, who Quinn met early on in her life-changing journey. His TED Talk is still one of my favourites. When you connect how you want to feel with why you want to do something, your goals have more meaning.

The reason why your New Years resolutions don’t stick is because they’re not realistic or in alignment with your core desired feelings or values. Review your goal list for this year. What do you want to feel like this year? It could be time to rewrite some of those goals or scrap them altogether.